My professor of Russian history, Peter Brown, inspired our class to address some very interesting subjects over the course of our studies. For me, religion was always the most interesting - usually because the texts exaggerated the religious aspects drastically. My favorite source for this writing was "All Russia Is Burning!" - definitely one of the best texts I've read on the subject of "peasant practice".
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For the peasant of Late Imperial Russia, religion was a matter of extreme important and quite central to all aspects of life. Proper practice of the Orthodox faith and a strong clergy were considered more than essential to the life of the villages and the lengths to which the residents of countryside villages went to in order to ensure quality in their religious representatives was impressive . Religion was perhaps most important in the home, where invocations were made to saints – represented by icons in the human – for protection and to ensure the family’s prospering. To the peasants, God’s unmatchable position as the leading protector of honest Orthodox practitioners was bolstered by local rituals, some pre-Christian in origin but executed in ways that only affirmed the peasant’s dedication to Christianity, and included the utilization of matter meant to represent the divine such as holy water, religious sites or protective fire . The generally unchanging realm of Russian peasant religion allowed for villages to retain their traditions for many years and, in employing aspects of folk religion, ensured an ease of practice through access to the Orthodox God. As a result, the Russian peasant knew their religion thoroughly and could be particularly well-versed in biblical knowledge .
Despite the dedication of the peasantry to Orthodoxy, foreign observers regularly branded the religion practiced by the lower classes as dreadfully inappropriate and, in some cases, brazenly paganistic. Visiting religious figures or state officers regularly labeled peasant practice of Orthodoxy as marred and thoroughly desecrated through the crude behavior of the peasantry (as well as the local clergy, according to some ). To officials, the religion practiced by the Russian peasantry was incorrect and blamed on a number of reasons ranging from the dour state of literacy among the nation’s peasants as well as an assumed return to pre-Christian values that had begun to violently turn the lower classes against the religion: according to foreign observers, the church’s authority and possessions were commonly disrespected and the clergy even put into danger by the increasingly volatile lower classes . Efforts were made to better educate the peasantry within the religious sphere and denounce aspects of local religion considered heretical, but the peasants were still considered to be too uncivilized or unintelligent to properly adhere to Orthodox Christianity in the face of pagan practices . The more privileged of the Orthodox and state ranks saw the peasantry as heretical, while the peasantry saw their devotion to God as utterly legitimate and comprehensive. Thus emerges a question on the subject of the Russian peasant’s religious mentality: were the familiar devotions of the lower classes legitimate and conductive to peasant religious life – and the state too obtrusive in branding the peasants as heathens – or did foreign observers have a strong argument in favor of a tighter hold on peasant religious life to prevent the burgeoning irreligious nature of the Russian peasants?
The methods of religion put to use by the peasants themselves made much sense within the framework of the Russian peasant mindset and community. One of the most notable qualities of folk Orthodoxy, or dvoeverie (“double faith”), is its legacy of tradition among the peasants; as stated by Chulos in his piece “Myths of the Pious or Pagan…”, “tradition [dvoeverie] was sacred and, as a popular expression put it, not to be questioned” . Thus, the Orthodox peasant practice represented a comfortable factor within the otherwise difficult life of the peasants – it was a stable tradition to which the peasants could adhere in order to cope with daily trouble. Peasant Orthodoxy united and strengthened the community and its representatives in the forms of regional priests were very important figures in the community due to their positions as representative of the faith. In some cases, peasants protested against changes within the structure of the local clergy and provoked the appearance of Tsarist law enforcement to quell unrest over the perceived attempt at dismantling an aspect of their lives; the reaction from the visiting religious superintendent was to spitefully accuse the peasants of irreligious drunkardry . This event is a stark contrast to the accusation made by officials that the peasants had began a campaign of aggression against Orthodox clergy – rather, the peasants considered priests to be extremely important parts of their lives. Within some communities, a combination of unfamiliarity of proper treatment of Orthodox clergy or legitimate veneration caused some members of the peasant community to nearly worship members of the clergy due to their apparent holiness . The attempts of the state at interfering within the structure of the peasant community through denouncement of peasant activity as harmful to the church was restrictive to the peasants’ religious development and, in cases where the peasants performed acts that did not mesh well with existing state church doctrine, their innovations were branded as elements of dvoeverie.
Peasant practitioners thought themselves to be nothing more exotic or profane than simple Orthodox Christians and that the less ‘mainstream’ elements they incorporated into their faith were put to use in order to honor God, not to defame Orthodoxy like observers seemed to assume; ‘pagan rituals’ were simply prayers executed by peasants hoping to invoke holy protection or aid in almost any event – a useful quality in the world of the peasants, where each new daily hardship may require asking for the help of a patron saint . This is not dissimilar to the Catholic tradition in which the assistance of saints was invoked in a time of need, nor was it much different from the Islamic Sufi tendency to request the spiritual governance of famous hadrat (“great presences”).
An example of rituals perceived to be paganistic in nature would be the apparent ‘worship’ of fire by peasants as detailed in Russia is Burning!. In her work, Frierson observes that fire was not worshipped in any variety of anti-Christian or pagan behavior but venerated as an earthly representation of divine power; to many, the ‘holy fire’ produced through lightning strikes was considered the work of the Hebrew prophet Elijah and thus a direct representation of God’s legitimacy . The aforementioned Feast of St. John the Baptist, also known as ‘Kupalo’, used fire as a deliverer of divine protection: peasants would leap through a blazing bonfire in order to ensure holy shielding from evil. While leaning toward a folk tradition due to its position on the agrarian calendar (and thus potentially related to ancient non-Christian practices due to the pagan focus on the changing of the seasons), the practice is specifically noted by Frierson as representative of how peasants celebrated Orthodox Christian holidays . The peasant adoration of fire, despite the major role which it played in the life of the lower classes, was regarded as a thoroughly paganistic behavior by observers unfamiliar with the practice’s purpose. The use of fire as representative of a comforting divine presence can be compared to the more mainstream Russian use of holy icons, which could be seen in every Russian dwelling from the lowliest izba (“abode”) to the grandest royal palace.
In seeing what they believed to be un-Christian behavior, observers – as detailed in “Myths of the Pious or Pagan…” – noted that the peasants lacked a general adherence to the sacred nature of purely Orthodox symbols with a final summation being that the peasants were leaning toward a new form of Orthodox paganism . The truth was quite to the contrary, however, as seen through the violently protective nature of the peasantry toward Orthodox structures and icons during the Bolshevik Revolution in which representations of the faith were branded as tools of the collapsing Imperial state and demolished . Despite the truly pious nature of the peasants and the legitimacy of their faith, it could not be believed that the peasants had the capacity to independently interpret their own faith.
The opinion of foreign observers on the subject of the lower classes’ adherence to folk Orthodoxy was that it came as a result of the woeful amounts of peasant ignorance toward life outside of their birth villages. Up until and including this point in history, real education had been completely denied to peasants as decreed by a 1723 synod which stated that it was essential for houses of education “to dismiss and henceforth not to admit people belonging to estate owners and the sons of peasants, as well as the stupid and the malignant” – effectively a direct insult to the peasants, as well as a display of the general attitude of the privileged toward the peasants . In viewing material on the subject, a reader may quickly begin to see the insultingly simple way in which the privileged view the peasants: they were largely considered unintelligent and, thus, likely victims of religious corruption due to their complete lack of knowledge (and disinterest) of Orthodox Christianity . Some sources provide differing information, especially on the subject of religion: peasant devotees were known to log complaints about theologically unqualified clergymen, citing their own impressive understanding of Orthodox scripture and ritual in denouncing ill-informed church representatives . This interaction between the higher clergy and the peasantry supports the fact that the privileged did not fully comprehend the nature of peasant Christianity, as can also be seen in their mislabeling of folk Orthodoxy as paganism and general underappreciation of the consideration the peasantry put into their religion. An example of the latter can be seen in the chernitsy, young women of Central Russia who had taken a vow of celibacy in the name of God and spent their lives teaching the peasants about the importance of religion; these figures were popular among the peasantry and received much appreciation for the work that they did in the name of the faith. Citing this as yet another example of peasant ignorance, Archbishop Anastasii called for an end to chernitsy activity and for his clergy to actively preach against their influence . The criticism of the Orthodox Church – a belief structure that utilizes adapted ‘heathen’ symbols in the foundations of its own faith – toward innovations within their own religion in forms such as the chernitsy and the use of purifying ‘divine’ fire is fairly ludicrous. The peasants themselves were restrained in expressing their true religion due to the hypocrisies of the authoritative state church, and even later under the Bolsheviks.
As can be seen in records of interaction between foreign observers or the privileged and the peasantry, the nobility and upper clergy refuse to recognize the potential legitimacy in the lower classes’ interpretation of Orthodox Christianity. Continuing traditional trans-class Russian relations, the privileged members of Late Imperial Russia’s higher classes doubted that the religious convictions of the peasantry could be anything but a warped desecration of the faith system which the state clergy believed to be a form of new Christian paganism. The peasant’s supposed hostile treatment of the clergy, too, was indicative of the crude and unholy nature of the prostoi narod (“dark masses”). The inability of the peasants to adhere to true Orthodox ritual and holiday supported this mindset. Most likely unknown to the upper classes and high clergy of Late Imperial Russia was the true nature of the Russian peasant: well-informed in their piety and quite devoted in their worship of God, specifically within the Orthodox Christian frame. The higher classes’ disavowal of the peasantry’s potential to express itself religiously is simply a continuation of the unfair status of the peasantry – one that characterized the entire peasant class, an overwhelming portion of Russia’s population, as relegated to permanent ignorance and endless servitude to the upper classes as a result. The following passage, written by Vissarion Belinsky in his communications with famed Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol, describes the religious mentality of the Russian peasant quite succinctly.
“You, as far as I can see, do not properly understand the Russian public. Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression, but weighted down by heavy oppression and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness and apathy.”
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Works Cited
1. Belinsky, Vissarion and Thomas Riha (ed.). "Letter to Gogol” in Readings in Russian Civilization Volume II – Imperial Russia, 1700-1917 (University of Chicago Press: Chicago/London, 1969).
2. Chulos, C.J. “Myths of the Pious or Pagan Peasant in Post-Emancipation Central Russia (Voronezh Province).” Russian History/Histoire Russe 22 (1995).
3. Frierson, Cathy A. All Russia is Burning!: a Cultural History of Fire and Arson in Late Imperial Russia (University of Washington Press: Seattle/London, 2002).
4. Menshutkin, Boris and Thomas Riha (ed.). “Lomonosov (Excerpts)” in Readings in Russian Civilization Volume II – Imperial Russia, 1700-1917 (University of Chicago Press: Chicago/London, 1969.)
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I can't speak highly enough of Prof. Brown - the source materials he employed, alone, were worth the cost of admission.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
As The Empire Fell: Russia's Subjects during World War I
Here's an analysis of a text by Peter Gatrell, pertaining to World War I and the impact it had upon society. Great book - read it for a great explanation of how the everyday subject of the Russian Empire functioned as the state itself began to strain.
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In Russia’s First World War: a Social and Economic History, Peter Gatrell characterizes the experiences of the Russian lower classes in a way that echoes historically their treatment by the upper classes and the state. Throughout World War I, the state absolutely commanded the lives of the peasants and workers to best serve the war effort, depriving them of other options and effectively disregarding the humanity of the state’s subjects. The Revolution of 1905 and the Tsar’s subsequent lack of regard for the peasant’s capacity for democracy were indicative of the state’s inability to connect with the lower classes. In addition, the war effort disabled any chance of the peasantry to better itself economically and stunted the social growth of the lower classes, preventing any sense of societal mobility in the face of international conflict. The conscription issue, too, displayed the largely corrupt methods put to use by the state in promoting the privileged over the peasants. The depletion of local males for use on the front lines also modified gender roles within the lower classes. In Russia’s First World War: a Social and Economic History, Peter Gatrell elaborates upon the generally transformative – and oftentimes destructive – nature of the state’s decision making and World War I itself on the social fabric of Russia’s lower social orders.
Late Imperial Russia’s ambivalence toward the actual humanity of the lower classes in the face of recent attempts at democratizing the state is truly indicative of the harsh treatment forced upon the Russian commoner in the face of the state’s war effort. Massive social unrest brought on by the Revolution of 1905 was answered with, instead of legitimate concessions or even consideration toward the cause of the problem, “a clever combination of repression and reform”: voting was formalized for lower class groups alongside brutal execution of peasants who actively sought a fairer state . The formation of the State Duma in 1906, a democratic concession granted by Nicholas II only after the aforementioned social upheaval, did little to impact the inner workings of the state: the Tsar himself had little innate knowledge as to why the events preceding the Duma’s creation have even occurred – a display of the state’s unabashed ignorance toward the motives of the progressives and lower classes – and did not take the opinion of the public into account by any means, rather deciding to continue the often corrupt and undemocratic methods to which Nicholas II was most accustomed . While this did not directly impact the social fabric of the peasantry, the government’s denial of the public’s legitimate ability to participate in the semi-democratic process of the Duma assisted in bolstering the irritation of the lower classes.
The mismanagement of conscription and production by the Russian state influenced the economic standing of the nation as a whole and, as a result, greatly impacted social life. Gatrell states that, shockingly, “no thought was given to the impact of conscription on industrial production” – an unbelievable move on the part of the Russian military planners, those educated individuals who seemed to completely ignore the very basic drop in production that would be suffered upon the significant removal of workers from the industrial sector for use in the war . The effects of the drop in industry were felt not only by the state’s war effort, which proved lackluster in terms of munitions, but also by the peasants who felt twin blows to their financial state and social mobility. The inability of many Russian factories to transfer over to military production also led to the loss of Russian jobs, plunging hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment . Strikes were not common due to the patriotic sentiment behind war mobilization of Russia’s industrial sector: interrupting the flow of work may hurt or kill the Russian soldier, a fault that no lower class worker would want leveled against them by either state authorities (being branded as traitors and charged ) or by their peers (thus preventing social unity among the equally underprivileged worker classes) .
Finances in general were modified catastrophically due to the fluctuating Russian economy; as a result, the lower classes were affected socially. The value of Russian currency dropped and the likelihood of a peasant being able to buy land or even enter the market of manufactured goods thinned frighteningly, thus disallowing the Russian peasant to prosper in the war’s economic environment . At one point, the state imposed a prohibition on alcohol and, after a gain in economic activity, credited it for bolstering peasant productivity. Gatrell quickly disregards this, citing the peasants’ panicked attempts at liquidating their inventories as the true reason for economic activity – a much less hopeful view of what was only a temporary boost to the well-being of the peasants. Despite this, Gatrell does acknowledge that the general financial lot of the peasantry did remain steady or improve nominally. Business ventures such as the (sometimes coerced) distribution of livestock to the Tsarist army and the aforementioned liquidation of surplus onto the market allowed for peasants to gain an amount of cash. It is worth once again referencing, however, of the impressive inflation experienced by Russian currency – a fact that Gatrell should have attached directly to his thought on the state of peasant financial intake .
Understandably, the conscription itself proved to be destructive to the social fabric of the lower classes. Peasant households deprived villages of their male populations to extreme points, removing economic stability and leaving the home in the hands of the non-conscripted members. According to Gatrell, almost one half of peasant households did not possess males of working age due to the mass conscription of the lower classes leading up to 1917 . Exemptions among the lower classes were almost universally disregarded, even if it meant another worker in the factories to contribute to the war effort. Gatrell quotes General Mikhail Belaev as stating that regarding any peasant exemption as legitimate would contribute a “delirious impact on [the] morale” of the armed forces . This sort of consideration toward the peasantry led to a degradation of respect for state representatives and authority, including officials of the state’s Orthodox Church: priests suffered financially due to low attendance and were regarded as mouthpieces of the state . Even family structure and authority came into question as Russian youths engaged in criminal activity, regarded by the state – the very entity that pushed peasantry’s youth into such behavior due to the effects of the loss of jobs and conscription upon the family – as mere “hooligans” .
The depleting of the male population in the villages and towns changed the Russian social dynamic by forcing women into a more public role. As a result of the large amount of men forced to the front lines by the conflict, women were forced out from the homes and into the public sphere. Gatrell describes that by 1916, women outnumbered men in peasant villages by approximately 60%; as a result, female peasants – known for being a good amount more liberal than their masculine counterparts – not only gained a prominent role in the matters of farming but also assisted in the institution of new techniques and technologies within that field . Women also participated greatly within the industrial workplace, a setting populated by an increasingly limited amount of men. From 1913 to 1916, the amount of women participating in a factory setting increasing from 30% to 40% with the largest inclusions of new female workers in the chemical and textile industries . Perhaps most starkly representative of the changing role played by lower class women was the forming of a “women’s battalion of death” by Maria Bochkareva, a peasant worker who was admitted to participate in the military after proving her ability to the overwhelmingly misogynistic Tsarist armed forces . Although these units were utilized mostly to foster the faltering morale of the armed forces in the face of losses and eventually failing in that goal, the mobilization of women for any purpose on the front of battle is a distinct display of the shift in gender roles that occurred as a result of World War I.
It is an undeniable fact that World War I and the Imperial Russian state’s treatment of the conflict had long-reaching effects upon the everyday lives of the lower classes. This fact is made even more important when one realizes the major role that these same peasants – neglected socially by the falsely inclusive government, their social fabric effectively torn asunder by the state’s lack of preparation for the Great War – would have in Russia’s rise in social unrest, which would eventually emerge into Russia’s February Revolution. The next social upheaval – the October Revolution – would come to be executed by the Bolsheviks, a group which disposed of the autocratic Tsar in favor of a government, at its base, with a large emphasis on the worth and participation of the lower classes. The seemingly endless abuse heaped unto the peasant classes throughout Russian history, from the period of the Rus’ serfs under the Mongol Yoke and eventually Ivan the Terrible’s harsh repression of any public resistance to the more contemporary ignorance toward the plight of the Imperial Russian peasant, would come to shape the Russian state in ways most certainly unexpected only years beforehand.
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Works Cited
Gatrell, Peter. Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History. Pearson Educated Limited: Harlow, England, 2005.
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Works on Russian history always seem to get me riled up - for good reason, it's always so damned interesting.
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In Russia’s First World War: a Social and Economic History, Peter Gatrell characterizes the experiences of the Russian lower classes in a way that echoes historically their treatment by the upper classes and the state. Throughout World War I, the state absolutely commanded the lives of the peasants and workers to best serve the war effort, depriving them of other options and effectively disregarding the humanity of the state’s subjects. The Revolution of 1905 and the Tsar’s subsequent lack of regard for the peasant’s capacity for democracy were indicative of the state’s inability to connect with the lower classes. In addition, the war effort disabled any chance of the peasantry to better itself economically and stunted the social growth of the lower classes, preventing any sense of societal mobility in the face of international conflict. The conscription issue, too, displayed the largely corrupt methods put to use by the state in promoting the privileged over the peasants. The depletion of local males for use on the front lines also modified gender roles within the lower classes. In Russia’s First World War: a Social and Economic History, Peter Gatrell elaborates upon the generally transformative – and oftentimes destructive – nature of the state’s decision making and World War I itself on the social fabric of Russia’s lower social orders.
Late Imperial Russia’s ambivalence toward the actual humanity of the lower classes in the face of recent attempts at democratizing the state is truly indicative of the harsh treatment forced upon the Russian commoner in the face of the state’s war effort. Massive social unrest brought on by the Revolution of 1905 was answered with, instead of legitimate concessions or even consideration toward the cause of the problem, “a clever combination of repression and reform”: voting was formalized for lower class groups alongside brutal execution of peasants who actively sought a fairer state . The formation of the State Duma in 1906, a democratic concession granted by Nicholas II only after the aforementioned social upheaval, did little to impact the inner workings of the state: the Tsar himself had little innate knowledge as to why the events preceding the Duma’s creation have even occurred – a display of the state’s unabashed ignorance toward the motives of the progressives and lower classes – and did not take the opinion of the public into account by any means, rather deciding to continue the often corrupt and undemocratic methods to which Nicholas II was most accustomed . While this did not directly impact the social fabric of the peasantry, the government’s denial of the public’s legitimate ability to participate in the semi-democratic process of the Duma assisted in bolstering the irritation of the lower classes.
The mismanagement of conscription and production by the Russian state influenced the economic standing of the nation as a whole and, as a result, greatly impacted social life. Gatrell states that, shockingly, “no thought was given to the impact of conscription on industrial production” – an unbelievable move on the part of the Russian military planners, those educated individuals who seemed to completely ignore the very basic drop in production that would be suffered upon the significant removal of workers from the industrial sector for use in the war . The effects of the drop in industry were felt not only by the state’s war effort, which proved lackluster in terms of munitions, but also by the peasants who felt twin blows to their financial state and social mobility. The inability of many Russian factories to transfer over to military production also led to the loss of Russian jobs, plunging hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment . Strikes were not common due to the patriotic sentiment behind war mobilization of Russia’s industrial sector: interrupting the flow of work may hurt or kill the Russian soldier, a fault that no lower class worker would want leveled against them by either state authorities (being branded as traitors and charged ) or by their peers (thus preventing social unity among the equally underprivileged worker classes) .
Finances in general were modified catastrophically due to the fluctuating Russian economy; as a result, the lower classes were affected socially. The value of Russian currency dropped and the likelihood of a peasant being able to buy land or even enter the market of manufactured goods thinned frighteningly, thus disallowing the Russian peasant to prosper in the war’s economic environment . At one point, the state imposed a prohibition on alcohol and, after a gain in economic activity, credited it for bolstering peasant productivity. Gatrell quickly disregards this, citing the peasants’ panicked attempts at liquidating their inventories as the true reason for economic activity – a much less hopeful view of what was only a temporary boost to the well-being of the peasants. Despite this, Gatrell does acknowledge that the general financial lot of the peasantry did remain steady or improve nominally. Business ventures such as the (sometimes coerced) distribution of livestock to the Tsarist army and the aforementioned liquidation of surplus onto the market allowed for peasants to gain an amount of cash. It is worth once again referencing, however, of the impressive inflation experienced by Russian currency – a fact that Gatrell should have attached directly to his thought on the state of peasant financial intake .
Understandably, the conscription itself proved to be destructive to the social fabric of the lower classes. Peasant households deprived villages of their male populations to extreme points, removing economic stability and leaving the home in the hands of the non-conscripted members. According to Gatrell, almost one half of peasant households did not possess males of working age due to the mass conscription of the lower classes leading up to 1917 . Exemptions among the lower classes were almost universally disregarded, even if it meant another worker in the factories to contribute to the war effort. Gatrell quotes General Mikhail Belaev as stating that regarding any peasant exemption as legitimate would contribute a “delirious impact on [the] morale” of the armed forces . This sort of consideration toward the peasantry led to a degradation of respect for state representatives and authority, including officials of the state’s Orthodox Church: priests suffered financially due to low attendance and were regarded as mouthpieces of the state . Even family structure and authority came into question as Russian youths engaged in criminal activity, regarded by the state – the very entity that pushed peasantry’s youth into such behavior due to the effects of the loss of jobs and conscription upon the family – as mere “hooligans” .
The depleting of the male population in the villages and towns changed the Russian social dynamic by forcing women into a more public role. As a result of the large amount of men forced to the front lines by the conflict, women were forced out from the homes and into the public sphere. Gatrell describes that by 1916, women outnumbered men in peasant villages by approximately 60%; as a result, female peasants – known for being a good amount more liberal than their masculine counterparts – not only gained a prominent role in the matters of farming but also assisted in the institution of new techniques and technologies within that field . Women also participated greatly within the industrial workplace, a setting populated by an increasingly limited amount of men. From 1913 to 1916, the amount of women participating in a factory setting increasing from 30% to 40% with the largest inclusions of new female workers in the chemical and textile industries . Perhaps most starkly representative of the changing role played by lower class women was the forming of a “women’s battalion of death” by Maria Bochkareva, a peasant worker who was admitted to participate in the military after proving her ability to the overwhelmingly misogynistic Tsarist armed forces . Although these units were utilized mostly to foster the faltering morale of the armed forces in the face of losses and eventually failing in that goal, the mobilization of women for any purpose on the front of battle is a distinct display of the shift in gender roles that occurred as a result of World War I.
It is an undeniable fact that World War I and the Imperial Russian state’s treatment of the conflict had long-reaching effects upon the everyday lives of the lower classes. This fact is made even more important when one realizes the major role that these same peasants – neglected socially by the falsely inclusive government, their social fabric effectively torn asunder by the state’s lack of preparation for the Great War – would have in Russia’s rise in social unrest, which would eventually emerge into Russia’s February Revolution. The next social upheaval – the October Revolution – would come to be executed by the Bolsheviks, a group which disposed of the autocratic Tsar in favor of a government, at its base, with a large emphasis on the worth and participation of the lower classes. The seemingly endless abuse heaped unto the peasant classes throughout Russian history, from the period of the Rus’ serfs under the Mongol Yoke and eventually Ivan the Terrible’s harsh repression of any public resistance to the more contemporary ignorance toward the plight of the Imperial Russian peasant, would come to shape the Russian state in ways most certainly unexpected only years beforehand.
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Works Cited
Gatrell, Peter. Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History. Pearson Educated Limited: Harlow, England, 2005.
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Works on Russian history always seem to get me riled up - for good reason, it's always so damned interesting.
Religious Development in Post-Independence Algeria
A paper that's admittedly shorter than I'd prefer, but a decent one that I had fun researching. I hope you like reading about the long-term results of colonialism!
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Under the French, Algeria’s Islam was considered indigenous subversion against colonial rule. In French Algeria, religious uniformity was used as a qualifier for avoiding the eye of the colonial authorities. Abandonment of indigenous (or in the Protestant case, non-French) creeds also bestowed the ability to apply for French citizenship – an essential step toward participating in France’s progressive republican system of governance. French restrictions upon Islamic symbols, such as the popular veiling of women according to Qur’anic law, led to the use of colonial tactics such as the forced unveiling of Algerian women as punishment for practicing the tradition. The religious structure, too, was restricted in its behavior. The French actively persecuted the rural Algerian mystics known as marabouts due to their potentially subversive and rebellious nature ; the urban ulama were stripped of their societal influence by the forcefully secular colonial authorities. These anti-Islamic, and indeed anti-religious actions, would have a deep impact upon Algeria’s future.
The independence of Algeria in July of 1962, achieved after a long and costly war between various factions hoping to gain control of the collapsing colonial entity, occurred in part due to religious factors. One of the major factions, the revolutionary Algerian group known as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), incorporated members of not only secular Algerian society but also members of an emerging reformist bloc within the generally powerless urban religious class. This “Reformist Ulama” derived its beliefs from the teachings of the modernist Algerian theologian Ben Badis (1889-1940), a conservative Muslim who disavowed the Islam of the Sufi-oriented marabouts and founded the conservative and anti-colonial Association of Muslim Algerian Ulama. His views gradually gained popular adherence as the public began to identify with the reformists, moreso than with the weakened urban ulama or the quietist rural Sufis who no longer represented the best interests of the Algerians. Islam acted as a unifying force among the resistant Algerians, and the “Reformist Ulama” functioned as a sort of lightning rod of resistance against the French. Thus, at the turn of Algeria’s rebirth, its religious traditions gained resurgence through conservatism.
Algeria’s new government, led by and large by former members of the Front de Libération Nationale, immediately elevated Islam to the level of state doctrine. Both the Algerian Constitution of 1964 as well as the second Algerian Constitution of 1976 declared Islam as the official religion of the Algerian Republic – a far cry from the secularism of the French colonial period. Islamic courts were utilized in family matters, and the Constitution detailed the illegitimacy of any state policies or legal rulings which violating the rules of the Qur’an. The one-party FLN-based government acted quickly, monopolizing their control of the new state’s religious establishment: mosques were built with state funding, Islamic schools were founded to train officials who favored the ruling party, and the FLN even distributed mandatory weekly prayers to imams across the country. The views of the Reformist Ulama were utilized by the FLN in reforming national religious institutions, and the views of Ben Badis contributed – on a noteworthy yet state-friendly note – to the modernist FLN government.
Left out of the new state’s arrangement of power were the actual members of the conservative Reformist Ulama. The more secular FLN had effectively taken control of the new state – leaving other organizations, including the conservative modernist Muslims who had actively fought alongside the FLN against the French and the pieds-noirs, without much influence in the direction taken by the post-colonial government. The initial response to this political maneuvering was the1963 foundation of Al-Qiyam Al-Islamiya – “Islamic Values” – an early Islamist organization composed of both reformist theologians and conservative FLN members who called for the FLN to overhaul the new government to fit into an Islamic state framework. This organization’s ideology was indicative of the changing face of Algerian Islam: while incorporating the views of Ben Badis, it also drew influences of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) – a prominent Islamic modernist writer who functioned as the primary ideologue for the ultraconservative Egyptian Islamist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Qiyam did not last long in any official capacity; similar ideals, however, were soon co-opted by the government. Houari Boumedienne (1932-1978), the military leader who led a coup against the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella (1918-), advocated a policy of both Arabization and Islamization of the state – a move which led to the official recruitment of exiled members of the ultraconservative Islamist Muslim Brotherhood faction. On a lesser note, Boumedienne also utilized the youth of Al-Qiyam to combat leftist and Marxist student groups at state educational facilities – a precedent which would have grisly repercussions – before dissolving the group and pushing the Islamists underground.
While new elements were introduced to Algerian Islam, more familiar aspects of the region’s religion began to fall out of favor with both these new groups as well as the authoritarian government. This new conservatism gained adherence not only among urban Muslims, but also among rural Muslims – at the cost of abandoning a prominent historical aspect of Algerian Islam. The mystic thought of the Sufi marabouts, while still popular in urban areas, came under criticism from Al-Qiyam due to their non-conformist views and, according to the Islamists, their collaboration-through-inaction in favor of the French colonial government. The FLN-led government, too, began to act out against the marabouts for their lack of adherence to the state’s attempts at modernizing both society and religion. In 1968, sporadic violence occurred around the port city of Mostaganem involving Sufis; instead of addressing the dire social issues impacting the locale, including poverty and crime, the government readily blamed the chaos on the rebellious behavior of subversive mystics.
As official policies toward liberal religious thought hardened, so did the religious practice of the Algerians themselves – just in time for nationwide tumult. A massive government campaign toward creating jobs in the cities, as well as a general trend toward urbanization during the 1970’s and 1980’s, led to a swelling of the population in places such as the national capital at Algiers. The factor which lent fuel to this development was the discovery of both oil and natural gases on Algerian territory. These developments occurred as the state of life in Algerian worsened due to the constantly-tightening grip of the one-party government, which violently struck down protests and culled any emergent organizations – religious or otherwise – which emerged without their consent.
Those within the Islamist structure who hoped to achieve unity with the government were pushed aside by the growing bloc of hardline Islamists who espoused ultraorthodox views, claiming that their views were indicative of real Algerian virtues despite their recent foreign influences. Underneath the economic development of the 1980’s, the simmering ire held by the common Algerian toward his or her government began to fall prey to the influence of this subtle Islamism. Urban men and women began to “Islamify” themselves to keep up with these standards of Algerian value, donning traditional religious clothing such as the hijab for women as well as the thawb and kufi for men. In accordance with the Islamists’ Arabizing ideals, men began to wear beards as a sign of piety – a decision which was critiqued by Sufi figures, a historically weakened demographic which the government began to court in the 1980’s as an ally against Islamist influence, as indicative of the “alien” Wahhabi influence which was infecting the country’s religious atmosphere. Regardless of these views, the Algerian adoption of orthodox Arab-Islamic practices continued, and intensified, through the 1980’s.
As unrest increased and an adherence to conservative Islam emerged in popular Algerian society, the Islamist structure was revived. The Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), led by Muslims bred by a Muslim Brotherhood-styled education system, was founded in the early 1980’s but splintered quickly. The Mouvement Islamique Armée (MIA), a successor group led by former FLN official Moustafa Bouyali, courted and employed fundamentalist Muslims who had participated as mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan only months beforehand. The MIA endorsed its own uniformity at universities to compete with government attempts to enact the same policies; this led to the 1982 murder of a University of Algiers student as conducted by MIA operatives. The organization called openly for jihad against the Algerian government, branding it as an apostate regime and laying claim to the true legacy of the Algerian Revolution. Religion, once the glue that kept Algeria unified, began to push the state into instability. that had emerged amidst the government’s reconciliatory period.
Most pertinent to the state of Islam in Algeria were the results of the 1991 election. Prior to them, the growing influence of Algerian Islamists – as well as subversive state-employed former Muslim Brotherhood figures – led to a conciliatory approach by the government, who passed restrictive new family laws in 1984 to appease the Islamists. A resurgent Front Islamique du Salut, led by the populist Ali Benhadj (1956-) and funded by the Saudi-linked former FLN minister Abbassi Madani (1931-), gained admittance to the elections and, after an initial round of voting, seemed poised to gain control of the government. The authoritarian party-in-power, however, disavowed the results and banned further elections in the name of preserving democracy. This spark lit the fire which would become the Algerian Civil War – a conflict that would for eleven years and end in a government victory, a continued low-level insurgency, and a splintered sense of religious unity.
Contemporarily, the government still deals with the threat of Islamism. While the older blocs have weakened, new ones – including the infamous Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – have gained power and societal influence, which are utilized to commit acts of terrorism against a state which fundamentalist Muslims still consider an apostate entity. The semi-authoritarian state still regards itself as adhering to Islam, but has taken steps toward secularization – a move which, within the Algerian religious sense, is both despised and understood.
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Works Cited
Burgat, Francois. Face to Face with Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Burke, Edmund. Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Cudsi, Alexander S. and Ali al-Din Hilal. Islam and Power. London: Croon Helm, 1981.
Deeb, Mary Jane. “Islam and the Algerian State,” in Algeria (Country Study). Library of Congress: Federal Research Division, 2003.
Kepel, Gilles and Anthony F. Roberts (translator). Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. Islamic & Politics in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
Vatin, Jean-Claude. “Popular Puritanism versus State Reformism: Islam in Algeria,” in Islam in the Political Process by James P. Piscatori (editor), 98-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Winter, Bronwyn. Hijab & the Republic: Uncovering the French Headscarf Debate. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008.
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If only the professor hadn't put a page limit on it!
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Under the French, Algeria’s Islam was considered indigenous subversion against colonial rule. In French Algeria, religious uniformity was used as a qualifier for avoiding the eye of the colonial authorities. Abandonment of indigenous (or in the Protestant case, non-French) creeds also bestowed the ability to apply for French citizenship – an essential step toward participating in France’s progressive republican system of governance. French restrictions upon Islamic symbols, such as the popular veiling of women according to Qur’anic law, led to the use of colonial tactics such as the forced unveiling of Algerian women as punishment for practicing the tradition. The religious structure, too, was restricted in its behavior. The French actively persecuted the rural Algerian mystics known as marabouts due to their potentially subversive and rebellious nature ; the urban ulama were stripped of their societal influence by the forcefully secular colonial authorities. These anti-Islamic, and indeed anti-religious actions, would have a deep impact upon Algeria’s future.
The independence of Algeria in July of 1962, achieved after a long and costly war between various factions hoping to gain control of the collapsing colonial entity, occurred in part due to religious factors. One of the major factions, the revolutionary Algerian group known as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), incorporated members of not only secular Algerian society but also members of an emerging reformist bloc within the generally powerless urban religious class. This “Reformist Ulama” derived its beliefs from the teachings of the modernist Algerian theologian Ben Badis (1889-1940), a conservative Muslim who disavowed the Islam of the Sufi-oriented marabouts and founded the conservative and anti-colonial Association of Muslim Algerian Ulama. His views gradually gained popular adherence as the public began to identify with the reformists, moreso than with the weakened urban ulama or the quietist rural Sufis who no longer represented the best interests of the Algerians. Islam acted as a unifying force among the resistant Algerians, and the “Reformist Ulama” functioned as a sort of lightning rod of resistance against the French. Thus, at the turn of Algeria’s rebirth, its religious traditions gained resurgence through conservatism.
Algeria’s new government, led by and large by former members of the Front de Libération Nationale, immediately elevated Islam to the level of state doctrine. Both the Algerian Constitution of 1964 as well as the second Algerian Constitution of 1976 declared Islam as the official religion of the Algerian Republic – a far cry from the secularism of the French colonial period. Islamic courts were utilized in family matters, and the Constitution detailed the illegitimacy of any state policies or legal rulings which violating the rules of the Qur’an. The one-party FLN-based government acted quickly, monopolizing their control of the new state’s religious establishment: mosques were built with state funding, Islamic schools were founded to train officials who favored the ruling party, and the FLN even distributed mandatory weekly prayers to imams across the country. The views of the Reformist Ulama were utilized by the FLN in reforming national religious institutions, and the views of Ben Badis contributed – on a noteworthy yet state-friendly note – to the modernist FLN government.
Left out of the new state’s arrangement of power were the actual members of the conservative Reformist Ulama. The more secular FLN had effectively taken control of the new state – leaving other organizations, including the conservative modernist Muslims who had actively fought alongside the FLN against the French and the pieds-noirs, without much influence in the direction taken by the post-colonial government. The initial response to this political maneuvering was the1963 foundation of Al-Qiyam Al-Islamiya – “Islamic Values” – an early Islamist organization composed of both reformist theologians and conservative FLN members who called for the FLN to overhaul the new government to fit into an Islamic state framework. This organization’s ideology was indicative of the changing face of Algerian Islam: while incorporating the views of Ben Badis, it also drew influences of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) – a prominent Islamic modernist writer who functioned as the primary ideologue for the ultraconservative Egyptian Islamist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Qiyam did not last long in any official capacity; similar ideals, however, were soon co-opted by the government. Houari Boumedienne (1932-1978), the military leader who led a coup against the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella (1918-), advocated a policy of both Arabization and Islamization of the state – a move which led to the official recruitment of exiled members of the ultraconservative Islamist Muslim Brotherhood faction. On a lesser note, Boumedienne also utilized the youth of Al-Qiyam to combat leftist and Marxist student groups at state educational facilities – a precedent which would have grisly repercussions – before dissolving the group and pushing the Islamists underground.
While new elements were introduced to Algerian Islam, more familiar aspects of the region’s religion began to fall out of favor with both these new groups as well as the authoritarian government. This new conservatism gained adherence not only among urban Muslims, but also among rural Muslims – at the cost of abandoning a prominent historical aspect of Algerian Islam. The mystic thought of the Sufi marabouts, while still popular in urban areas, came under criticism from Al-Qiyam due to their non-conformist views and, according to the Islamists, their collaboration-through-inaction in favor of the French colonial government. The FLN-led government, too, began to act out against the marabouts for their lack of adherence to the state’s attempts at modernizing both society and religion. In 1968, sporadic violence occurred around the port city of Mostaganem involving Sufis; instead of addressing the dire social issues impacting the locale, including poverty and crime, the government readily blamed the chaos on the rebellious behavior of subversive mystics.
As official policies toward liberal religious thought hardened, so did the religious practice of the Algerians themselves – just in time for nationwide tumult. A massive government campaign toward creating jobs in the cities, as well as a general trend toward urbanization during the 1970’s and 1980’s, led to a swelling of the population in places such as the national capital at Algiers. The factor which lent fuel to this development was the discovery of both oil and natural gases on Algerian territory. These developments occurred as the state of life in Algerian worsened due to the constantly-tightening grip of the one-party government, which violently struck down protests and culled any emergent organizations – religious or otherwise – which emerged without their consent.
Those within the Islamist structure who hoped to achieve unity with the government were pushed aside by the growing bloc of hardline Islamists who espoused ultraorthodox views, claiming that their views were indicative of real Algerian virtues despite their recent foreign influences. Underneath the economic development of the 1980’s, the simmering ire held by the common Algerian toward his or her government began to fall prey to the influence of this subtle Islamism. Urban men and women began to “Islamify” themselves to keep up with these standards of Algerian value, donning traditional religious clothing such as the hijab for women as well as the thawb and kufi for men. In accordance with the Islamists’ Arabizing ideals, men began to wear beards as a sign of piety – a decision which was critiqued by Sufi figures, a historically weakened demographic which the government began to court in the 1980’s as an ally against Islamist influence, as indicative of the “alien” Wahhabi influence which was infecting the country’s religious atmosphere. Regardless of these views, the Algerian adoption of orthodox Arab-Islamic practices continued, and intensified, through the 1980’s.
As unrest increased and an adherence to conservative Islam emerged in popular Algerian society, the Islamist structure was revived. The Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), led by Muslims bred by a Muslim Brotherhood-styled education system, was founded in the early 1980’s but splintered quickly. The Mouvement Islamique Armée (MIA), a successor group led by former FLN official Moustafa Bouyali, courted and employed fundamentalist Muslims who had participated as mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan only months beforehand. The MIA endorsed its own uniformity at universities to compete with government attempts to enact the same policies; this led to the 1982 murder of a University of Algiers student as conducted by MIA operatives. The organization called openly for jihad against the Algerian government, branding it as an apostate regime and laying claim to the true legacy of the Algerian Revolution. Religion, once the glue that kept Algeria unified, began to push the state into instability. that had emerged amidst the government’s reconciliatory period.
Most pertinent to the state of Islam in Algeria were the results of the 1991 election. Prior to them, the growing influence of Algerian Islamists – as well as subversive state-employed former Muslim Brotherhood figures – led to a conciliatory approach by the government, who passed restrictive new family laws in 1984 to appease the Islamists. A resurgent Front Islamique du Salut, led by the populist Ali Benhadj (1956-) and funded by the Saudi-linked former FLN minister Abbassi Madani (1931-), gained admittance to the elections and, after an initial round of voting, seemed poised to gain control of the government. The authoritarian party-in-power, however, disavowed the results and banned further elections in the name of preserving democracy. This spark lit the fire which would become the Algerian Civil War – a conflict that would for eleven years and end in a government victory, a continued low-level insurgency, and a splintered sense of religious unity.
Contemporarily, the government still deals with the threat of Islamism. While the older blocs have weakened, new ones – including the infamous Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – have gained power and societal influence, which are utilized to commit acts of terrorism against a state which fundamentalist Muslims still consider an apostate entity. The semi-authoritarian state still regards itself as adhering to Islam, but has taken steps toward secularization – a move which, within the Algerian religious sense, is both despised and understood.
---
Works Cited
Burgat, Francois. Face to Face with Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Burke, Edmund. Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Cudsi, Alexander S. and Ali al-Din Hilal. Islam and Power. London: Croon Helm, 1981.
Deeb, Mary Jane. “Islam and the Algerian State,” in Algeria (Country Study). Library of Congress: Federal Research Division, 2003.
Kepel, Gilles and Anthony F. Roberts (translator). Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. Islamic & Politics in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
Vatin, Jean-Claude. “Popular Puritanism versus State Reformism: Islam in Algeria,” in Islam in the Political Process by James P. Piscatori (editor), 98-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Winter, Bronwyn. Hijab & the Republic: Uncovering the French Headscarf Debate. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008.
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If only the professor hadn't put a page limit on it!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Whole Lotta Jahiliyyah Here Today
Here's an essay on Sayyid Qutb, Bernard Lewis, and why I think both of them are lame.
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Islamism and Modernization:
Comparative Academic Perspectives
The apparently ‘denial of the West’ by the modern Muslim world has come to define conflict in the contemporary era. Ongoing calls for a return to Islamic fundamentals have come from scholarly sources such as the Pakistani political theorist Abu Ala Maududi and Iranian religious figurehead Ruhollah Khomeini; among these ‘Islamists’ was Sayyid Qutb, a leading proponent of reintegrating Islam into the political system who published a number of now significant commentaries on that very subject. Qutb’s thoughts, best summarized in his narrative Milestones, have been utilized by Islamist groups such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – a group to which Qutb belonged before his assassination for perceived treason against the secularizing Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser – as well as other movements ranging from the regional Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia to the global fundamentalist-terrorist structure of Al-Qaeda .
In an attempt to explain the motives behind the Muslim world’s turning away from the secular ideals and modernization of the West, academic sources in that very region have begun to address the topic and attempt to better understand the return to fundamentalism that the Dar al-Islam has begun to experience primarily in the last century. These figures including British-American Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis, the creator of “The Roots of Muslim Rage” – a 1990 lecture-turned-essay which attempts to analyze the hostility toward the West held by a growing number in the Muslim world – and the late Samuel Huntington, an American political scientist who authored the post-Cold War conflict theory titled “The Clash of Civilizations” – a 1992 piece which drew heavily from Lewis’s proposals and distinctly addressed the role of the Muslim world in global conflict.
Through an analysis of these academic views, it is evident that the less than pleasant relations between the West and the Dar al-Islam have had a major impact upon the rise of Islamism. Usually characterized as hostile and during times of relative peace as overtly suspicious, the Islamic world’s negative regard for the West not only encompasses the politicians and governments of that despised region but also the secular, modernizing fashion in which the West characterizes itself. As can be seen in “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, leading academic sources in the West chalk the Muslim world’s disregard for modernization and embracing of a return to fundamentals as potentially fueled by the touting of modernization as a Western ideal – giving further reason for the Dar al-Islam to deny it. On the other hand, Sayyid Qutb’s demand for a rebirth of political Islam and a revival of Qur’anic values explicitly mentions modernization and material innovation as “obligatory for us”; instead of denying modernization wholesale, the author believes that the Dar al-Islam need not be enveloped and defined by modernization but should utilize it in achieving the goals of Islamism . The encounter between Islam and modernization, characterized by conflict as it is, would not have necessarily been so if it had not been for the outwardly abrasive nature and perceived corruption of those ‘overly’ modernized Western powers observed by the Muslim world.
Bernard Lewis’s “The Roots of Muslim Rage” exemplifies the Western attempt at understanding the mindset of the anti-modern – and increasingly hostile – contemporary Muslim. Although dated, as Lewis states that “there is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as ‘advisers’” , this work is useful for a Westerner in their analysis of Islamist activity over the course of the last several decades. Lewis speaks from a distinctly secular, modern point of view: he states that “the idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate” and that, subsequently, any enemy facing off against these supporters of God is an agent of evil hoping to destabilize Islamic civilization . The world is divided into the Dar al-Islam (“house of Islam”) and the Dar al-Harb (“house of war”), two spheres that come into battle with one another due to the latter’s undermining of the Islamic faith. According to Lewis, the “pushing back” of the Muslims from their ‘conquered regions’ in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe signified the beginning of a “Western paramountcy” which the Muslim world has essentially rebelled against in an attempt to reassert the superiority lost in the West’s effective control of the world . The West came to be regarded as, initially, a center of wealth and success; after an increase in Western global hegemony, those hoping to reclaim the Islamic legacy pointed to the West’s growing secular sentiment and intensely technological – best exemplified through Soviet communism and American capitalism, both regarded as “soulless systems” – as harmful to the world and Muslims in particular. This view of Western political systems as inherently harmful to the faith and person of a Muslim is staunchly held by members of Al-Ikhwān Al-Muslimūn (“The Muslim Brotherhood”) as seen in the film Islam Is The Answer .
In order to better analyze the different distinctions held by the Muslim world toward separate Western entities, Lewis compares the views of the Dar al-Islam toward the former Soviet Union and the United States. The author begins with a discussion of the issue of Azerbaijani independence: the Muslim world did not rise up in support of this movement due to the perceived liberalism of its ideology and, in addition, the Soviet authorities – unlike the American authorities in their dealing with its own minority rights movements – did not move against the Azerbaijanis publicly and disseminate such actions within its own media . Accusations of mistreatment of women, imperialistic policies and racism are all leveled at the US, a fact which Lewis regards as puzzling due to the fact that much of the West outside of America engages in the same behavior or even worse . The specific Muslim interpretation of imperialism – namely, the ruling of the truly faithful (Muslims) by nonbelievers (which in this case includes the West, despite the predominance of Christianity and thus a special status within Islam) – is most certainly applicable to nations other than the United States, specifically the former Soviet Union. Lewis cites Russia as a prime example of a nation who has historically employed a heavy hand in dealing with its Muslim subjects in accordance with their faith ; indeed, Russia’s use of forced orthodoxy and its manipulation of Islamic clergy within its Central Asian hinterlands exemplifies the sort of behavior against which Lewis would assume the Muslim would lash out . On the other hand, Lewis observes that despite the state doctrine of atheism imposed by the Soviet Union, “they were not godless” and instead imposed an austere cult of personality that was in no way attractive or misleading to the Muslim subject in the same way that Western secularism and capitalism has shown to be . To Lewis, the threat of the West seems to be that it is a more tantalizing and ultimately more corruptive direction for the Muslim public to follow in comparison to the lesser evil of Soviet authoritarianism.
As Lewis notes, relations between the Muslim world and the West had not always been very hostile. Indeed, earlier regard by Muslims for modernization had been one of hope as brand new technologies may have assisted in the regaining and retaining of the Islamic legacy. The Dar al-Islam early regard for modernization was acclaim and even emulation as Muslim entities observed the successes of the West, specifically in regard to its economic and industrial matters; generations of Muslim reformers, admirers of the new Western methods, attempted to utilize modernization as a means of attempting to achieve “equality with the West [,] and perhaps restore their lost superiority” .
Historic documents support the Islamic tradition of appreciation (and even emulation) of modernization. Mustafa Reshit Pasha’s Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane, issued in Istanbul in 1839 to an audience which included European diplomats, contained many “Western” reforms for the Ottoman Empire and initiated the “Tanzimat Period”, a period of increased bureaucratization and an erosion of the absolute monarch’s power. Up to this point, interactions between the Ottoman Porte and modernizing European powers had been limited mostly to hostility as the hinterlands of the Ottoman Empire became targets for Western and Northern European powers – powers that eventually represented a major threat to the Empire. The French had begun to act antagonistically toward Ottoman possessions in North Africa and in 1830 began seizing territory in Ottoman Algeria, a process which they would eventually complete in their domination of the region. Russian forces had engaged in constant clashes with the Ottomans in Eastern Europe over key strategic locations such as Varna in Bulgarian territory and Azov in the Crimea. Most striking would be the support given by the French and Russians as well as the continent-spanning British Empire to the Empire’s rebellious Greek subjects. Viewing the Greeks as a deserving Christian power under the yoke of hateful Islamic rule, all three powers supported Greek partisans monetarily and militarily. Through interference in Ottoman affairs, modernizing European entities overpowered the Islamic state and, by the potential standards of the contemporary Islamist, forced it to capitulate to jahiliyyah.
The Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane’s call for modernization and reform of the ‘backward’ Ottoman state – indeed, “Westernization” – prompted a reaction from the European powers which had always regarded the Ottoman state efficiency and military ability as less advanced than those possessed by Western powers. In addressing the ills of Ottoman society, the Empire was attempting to reach out to European powers for aid in bolstering their state; effectively, the Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane’s presentation to European diplomats was an open request for help and potential acceptance from European powers. The Ottoman Empire, in the views of Lewis’s Islamists, had been corrupted and interfered with by Western powers.
Lewis blames the rejection of Western modernization and other ideals on the relations between the Muslim world and the West: humiliation at the submitting of the Muslim world to Western hegemony – including the enforcement of Western politics and secularism by corrupted officials within the Muslim world, seen as a result of Western interference into the Dar al-Islam – and a disgust at the self-destructive, mechanical nature of a world that regards itself most predominantly by its own modernized nature . As Lewis states, the United States is the “legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West”; thus, the US is the target of the Dar al-Islam’s centuries-old frustration toward the West . In an attempt to strike out against this corruptive polity, the Muslim World has adapted some of its aspects – political freedom, Western military technology – and modified it in a way to best suit its Islamic world and better assist in the spread of fundamentalism.
The views of Sayyid Qutb, as published in his Milestones narrative, are an interesting companion piece to Bernard Lewis’s “Roots of Muslim Rage”. In his Introduction Qutb denies the legitimacy of the two major political systems put to use by the West – Soviet communism and Western democracy – for their inability to serve the world’s population properly as well as their lack of regard for the important morals to which the human race must adhere. Qutb claims that the failings of these systems are indicative of a need for the return to Islam, as it is the only “system” (in Qutb’s view, not only religiously but also politically) which encompasses the true importance of morals into its governance . The Egyptian political theorist promotes the revival of an Islamic political tradition in order to combat the secular, “man-made” methods utilized by those who have fallen under Western influence and thus attempt to corrupt the inner-workings of the Dar al-Islam; Qutb goes on to state that, while the Western world is alluring in its production and distribution of “marvelous things” within the fields of science and material matters and that the Islamic world has little to compare to these things, Islam as a political system must be revived to ensure a measure of competition with the West . This is most certainly in accordance with Lewis’s belief that the fundamentalist movement has gained strength due to the imposition of Western political and ideological methods upon fields within the Muslim world.
Rather than outwardly deny all aspects of the modernized West, Qutb points out the importance in material innovation for the Dar al-Islam. In his Introduction, he states the following.
“…Islam itself, which elevates man to the position of representative of God on earth, and which, under certain conditions, considers the responsibilities of this representative as the worship of God and the purpose of man’s creation, makes material progress obligatory for us.”
Qutb’s belief is that, in harnessing material innovation, the Muslim world has the potential to regain what it had lost to the West. He claims that while Europe’s “creative mind” has far surpassed what the Islamic community is able to accomplish contemporarily, it is not in a way that dissuades jahilliyah (“ignorance” – as well as secularism, in Qutb’s regard). To Qutb, the West’s material innovations and non-Islamic progress in general are only a reinforcement of this jahilliyah and has even taken the form of attempts at ruling the world through man-made values as opposed to those that are passed down to the Muslims – in the author’s words, “a corollary of rebellion of God’s authority and the denial of the dignity of man given to him by God” . Qutb’s statements on the subject of European achievement surpassing that of the Islamic civilization is very reminiscent of the claims by Lewis that deep-seated within the Islamic frustration against the West is a jealousy against the perceived superiority of those who utilized modernization.
The jahiliyyah described as plaguing contemporary society also plagued the world in which the original Qur’anic Generation of Muhammad lived. Qutb analyzes why that generation is of any impressive quality, querying as to if the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad was the only reason as to why they were considered so pious. The author’s belief is that the Prophet’s appearance within the Qur’anic Generation was not the deciding factor in their piety; rather, the purity of their faith and their use of Islam as more than just a religious doctrine but as a way of life made them truly admirable . They were largely untouched by cultures best defined through their ignorance, such as the Romans; their sole form of guidance was through the Prophet and, as a direct conduit of God, the message delivered to them was pure and arrived as necessary instead of being available as a guide to life like the Qur’an is today. Qutb goes on to state that the holy message which has passed down through the ages, while still divine in origin, has been intermingled with other sources including theories from other faiths as well as even secular scholarly work; thus, contemporary Islam – influenced by foreign sources and no longer adhered to as a way of life but as a piece of literature or history – is an aspect of the all-encompassing modern jahiliyyah.
One of the most important things to take from Qutb’s analysis of the Qur’anic Generation is its very important role in defining Islamic identity. As noted by Lewis, the impact of the West upon Islamic society and civilization is perceived as eroding the foundation of the basic identity of the Muslim World. This is due to the fact that the identity of Islam has little to do with the traditional Westernized form of modernization and has little real chance to mesh smoothly with some of its secular ideals. Even the historical roots of the two identities, Western and Islamic, are completely separate: although they mingled briefly from time to time, the Western (in this case Roman) identity and the Islamic (in this case Arabian) identity drew extremely little from each other and interacted very rarely. Within Qutb’s view of the Islamic identity, an adoption of Western modernization would be quite painful: by adding aspects to it that are not inherently tied to the Islamic past, the legacy of the Islamic civilization would be effectively corrupted and rendered ignorant. This very viewpoint is held by many members of the Muslim Brotherhood as seen in the film Islam Is the Answer: those members of Egyptian Islamic society who adhered to foreign culture (in this case, the speakers blamed the Western culture of Israel) assisted in the erosion of Islamic identity and the faith itself . In order for a Muslim to act appropriately and work to their full potential, the Islamic state is the ideal structure.
In order to combat ignorance, Qutb advises a “cutting off” of the true Muslims from the world of jahiliyyah. In his stating of this, the author refers to the methods put to use by Muhammad in his removal of the original Qur’anic Generation from the pagan sphere, remarking upon its usefulness in purifying a modern Muslim in its reflection of the efforts of the early Muslims; Qutb even goes on to suggest that today’s ignorance is stronger than it has ever been and that the removal of a Muslim from a heathen (or secular) environment, despite still having ties to it by necessity, is essential to allow true faith . By following a proper Islamic life and denying a life of jahiliyyah, believes Qutb, the proper Muslim will begin to impact the ignorant society around himself and the non-Muslim society will begin to change fundamentally as a result of exposure to such faith. Qutb sees such an oppositional existence as a major struggle, regarding it as a front in the battle directly between the forces of good and evil, which extends past earthly existence and into the afterlife . The author also sees the elimination of foreign influence into the life of a Muslim community as useful in the fostering of an ideal state – namely, one dictated by shari’ah law. This idea is in line with the beliefs of Bernard Lewis, namely in his regard that Islamists view those who combat the existence of Islam in its purest forms as its worst enemies .
The impact of jahiliyyah upon an existing Muslim community can be seen readily in the aforementioned example of Mustafa Reshit Pasha’s Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane. The proclamation regards the faith of its subjects quite differently in comparison to the older Turkish legal documents – a point most prominent in regards to the attempt to appeal to Europeans. The proclamation was not issued alongside a fatwa (Islamic legal proclamation) as was formal with Ottoman declarations. This decision, one that undoubtedly irritated the Ottoman ulama, was a step away from the traditional Ottoman practice of associating the Sultan’s rulings with approval from shari’ah scholars – it was a move toward removing power from the Porte’s religious figures in favor of a more secular centralization of authority. In addition, religious equality was promoted alongside the safety of all Ottoman subjects . This ruling is in drastic contrast to Sari Mehmed Pasha’s “Ministers and Bribery”, a piece which demanded the submission of the Sultan’s subjects to the will of Allah and the Sultan himself as the representation of Islam’s highest terrestrial authority; it is also a display of the sort of behavior which would be explained by Lewis’s Islamists and Qutb himself as a corruption of Muslims due to the interference of the West . For the world’s greatest Islamic power to promote a step toward secularism – a blasphemously Western ideal, by Qutb’s and Lewis’s writing – would be a direct denial of Islam’s legitimacy within the form of a state .
Despite the fierceness with which Islamists decry the West, it is evident that the at least some aspects of modernization are applicable to Islamism. On the one hand, the issuing of a document such as the Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane would be seen as an abandonment of the Islamic ideal in an attempt to join in with the legacy of the secularizing, nigh-faithless West. Those nations best defined as modernized or even defined through their modernization have been the ones who have enacted policies of imperialism – in Lewis’s loose definition, control over Muslims by non-Muslims – and abuse toward the non-modernized and predominantly Islamic world for the last several hundred years . The West has largely been in control of the world’s affairs for quite some time and, naturally, the Islamic world chafes under this hegemony. In addition, ‘modern’ systems such as Western governments and banks do not function appropriately within Islamic societies, drawing the ire of both the Islamic elite and the common Muslim . On the other hand, Qutb displays in Milestones – a work widely considered indicative and influential within Islamist thought – has great regard for human material innovation; he extolls the importance of regaining the Islamic legacy lost to that civilization’s rivalry with the West and claims that modernization is the path which Islamism must follow in order to reclaim its purity of faith . In addition, Lewis makes special note of the adaptation of Western technologies and political systems by Islamic institutions and states – regardless of their relations with Western powers – in order to fulfill an Islamic goal, within the framework of a largely unchallenged Islamic identity .
In comparing and contrasting the sources, it becomes clear that “Westernization” – the secular, self-absorbed modernization touted by the imperialists of Europe and the United States – is not a goal favored by modern Islamists due to their view that it can only lead to the corruption of an individual and eventually an entire society. On the other hand, modernization is not a force completely in opposition to Islamism: the hostility directed at modernity is more of a lashing out against the hegemonic, faithless West than it is a rejection of progress. At their roots, Qutb and Lewis support the concept that Islamism does not deny the usefulness – and in Qutb’s case, necessity – of modernity in the face of Western opposition. It is very evident that the modernization put to use by Islamists must be quite different from the model provided by the West: it must assist in the preservation of Islamic fundamentals and conserve the essential aspects of the Muslim identity.
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Works Cited
1. Crews, Robert. "Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth-Century Russia.” The American Historical Review 108.1 (2003): 50-83.
2. Lewis, Bernard. “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” The Atlantic 266.3 (1990): 47-60.
3. Marchal, Roland. “Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War Before and After September 11” in de Waal, Alex (editor). Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
4. Mustafa Reshit Pasha, Halil Inalcik (translator) and J.C. Hurewitz (editor). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record. Yale University Press: New Haven, 1975.
5. Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones. Kazi Publications: Chicago, 1993.
6. Sari Mehmed Pasha and Walter Livingston Wright, Jr. (translator/editor). Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and Governors. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1971.
7. Islam Is the Answer. Film. USA/Egypt: Landmark Media, 1988.
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Islamism and Modernization:
Comparative Academic Perspectives
The apparently ‘denial of the West’ by the modern Muslim world has come to define conflict in the contemporary era. Ongoing calls for a return to Islamic fundamentals have come from scholarly sources such as the Pakistani political theorist Abu Ala Maududi and Iranian religious figurehead Ruhollah Khomeini; among these ‘Islamists’ was Sayyid Qutb, a leading proponent of reintegrating Islam into the political system who published a number of now significant commentaries on that very subject. Qutb’s thoughts, best summarized in his narrative Milestones, have been utilized by Islamist groups such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – a group to which Qutb belonged before his assassination for perceived treason against the secularizing Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser – as well as other movements ranging from the regional Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia to the global fundamentalist-terrorist structure of Al-Qaeda .
In an attempt to explain the motives behind the Muslim world’s turning away from the secular ideals and modernization of the West, academic sources in that very region have begun to address the topic and attempt to better understand the return to fundamentalism that the Dar al-Islam has begun to experience primarily in the last century. These figures including British-American Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis, the creator of “The Roots of Muslim Rage” – a 1990 lecture-turned-essay which attempts to analyze the hostility toward the West held by a growing number in the Muslim world – and the late Samuel Huntington, an American political scientist who authored the post-Cold War conflict theory titled “The Clash of Civilizations” – a 1992 piece which drew heavily from Lewis’s proposals and distinctly addressed the role of the Muslim world in global conflict.
Through an analysis of these academic views, it is evident that the less than pleasant relations between the West and the Dar al-Islam have had a major impact upon the rise of Islamism. Usually characterized as hostile and during times of relative peace as overtly suspicious, the Islamic world’s negative regard for the West not only encompasses the politicians and governments of that despised region but also the secular, modernizing fashion in which the West characterizes itself. As can be seen in “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, leading academic sources in the West chalk the Muslim world’s disregard for modernization and embracing of a return to fundamentals as potentially fueled by the touting of modernization as a Western ideal – giving further reason for the Dar al-Islam to deny it. On the other hand, Sayyid Qutb’s demand for a rebirth of political Islam and a revival of Qur’anic values explicitly mentions modernization and material innovation as “obligatory for us”; instead of denying modernization wholesale, the author believes that the Dar al-Islam need not be enveloped and defined by modernization but should utilize it in achieving the goals of Islamism . The encounter between Islam and modernization, characterized by conflict as it is, would not have necessarily been so if it had not been for the outwardly abrasive nature and perceived corruption of those ‘overly’ modernized Western powers observed by the Muslim world.
Bernard Lewis’s “The Roots of Muslim Rage” exemplifies the Western attempt at understanding the mindset of the anti-modern – and increasingly hostile – contemporary Muslim. Although dated, as Lewis states that “there is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as ‘advisers’” , this work is useful for a Westerner in their analysis of Islamist activity over the course of the last several decades. Lewis speaks from a distinctly secular, modern point of view: he states that “the idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate” and that, subsequently, any enemy facing off against these supporters of God is an agent of evil hoping to destabilize Islamic civilization . The world is divided into the Dar al-Islam (“house of Islam”) and the Dar al-Harb (“house of war”), two spheres that come into battle with one another due to the latter’s undermining of the Islamic faith. According to Lewis, the “pushing back” of the Muslims from their ‘conquered regions’ in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe signified the beginning of a “Western paramountcy” which the Muslim world has essentially rebelled against in an attempt to reassert the superiority lost in the West’s effective control of the world . The West came to be regarded as, initially, a center of wealth and success; after an increase in Western global hegemony, those hoping to reclaim the Islamic legacy pointed to the West’s growing secular sentiment and intensely technological – best exemplified through Soviet communism and American capitalism, both regarded as “soulless systems” – as harmful to the world and Muslims in particular. This view of Western political systems as inherently harmful to the faith and person of a Muslim is staunchly held by members of Al-Ikhwān Al-Muslimūn (“The Muslim Brotherhood”) as seen in the film Islam Is The Answer .
In order to better analyze the different distinctions held by the Muslim world toward separate Western entities, Lewis compares the views of the Dar al-Islam toward the former Soviet Union and the United States. The author begins with a discussion of the issue of Azerbaijani independence: the Muslim world did not rise up in support of this movement due to the perceived liberalism of its ideology and, in addition, the Soviet authorities – unlike the American authorities in their dealing with its own minority rights movements – did not move against the Azerbaijanis publicly and disseminate such actions within its own media . Accusations of mistreatment of women, imperialistic policies and racism are all leveled at the US, a fact which Lewis regards as puzzling due to the fact that much of the West outside of America engages in the same behavior or even worse . The specific Muslim interpretation of imperialism – namely, the ruling of the truly faithful (Muslims) by nonbelievers (which in this case includes the West, despite the predominance of Christianity and thus a special status within Islam) – is most certainly applicable to nations other than the United States, specifically the former Soviet Union. Lewis cites Russia as a prime example of a nation who has historically employed a heavy hand in dealing with its Muslim subjects in accordance with their faith ; indeed, Russia’s use of forced orthodoxy and its manipulation of Islamic clergy within its Central Asian hinterlands exemplifies the sort of behavior against which Lewis would assume the Muslim would lash out . On the other hand, Lewis observes that despite the state doctrine of atheism imposed by the Soviet Union, “they were not godless” and instead imposed an austere cult of personality that was in no way attractive or misleading to the Muslim subject in the same way that Western secularism and capitalism has shown to be . To Lewis, the threat of the West seems to be that it is a more tantalizing and ultimately more corruptive direction for the Muslim public to follow in comparison to the lesser evil of Soviet authoritarianism.
As Lewis notes, relations between the Muslim world and the West had not always been very hostile. Indeed, earlier regard by Muslims for modernization had been one of hope as brand new technologies may have assisted in the regaining and retaining of the Islamic legacy. The Dar al-Islam early regard for modernization was acclaim and even emulation as Muslim entities observed the successes of the West, specifically in regard to its economic and industrial matters; generations of Muslim reformers, admirers of the new Western methods, attempted to utilize modernization as a means of attempting to achieve “equality with the West [,] and perhaps restore their lost superiority” .
Historic documents support the Islamic tradition of appreciation (and even emulation) of modernization. Mustafa Reshit Pasha’s Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane, issued in Istanbul in 1839 to an audience which included European diplomats, contained many “Western” reforms for the Ottoman Empire and initiated the “Tanzimat Period”, a period of increased bureaucratization and an erosion of the absolute monarch’s power. Up to this point, interactions between the Ottoman Porte and modernizing European powers had been limited mostly to hostility as the hinterlands of the Ottoman Empire became targets for Western and Northern European powers – powers that eventually represented a major threat to the Empire. The French had begun to act antagonistically toward Ottoman possessions in North Africa and in 1830 began seizing territory in Ottoman Algeria, a process which they would eventually complete in their domination of the region. Russian forces had engaged in constant clashes with the Ottomans in Eastern Europe over key strategic locations such as Varna in Bulgarian territory and Azov in the Crimea. Most striking would be the support given by the French and Russians as well as the continent-spanning British Empire to the Empire’s rebellious Greek subjects. Viewing the Greeks as a deserving Christian power under the yoke of hateful Islamic rule, all three powers supported Greek partisans monetarily and militarily. Through interference in Ottoman affairs, modernizing European entities overpowered the Islamic state and, by the potential standards of the contemporary Islamist, forced it to capitulate to jahiliyyah.
The Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane’s call for modernization and reform of the ‘backward’ Ottoman state – indeed, “Westernization” – prompted a reaction from the European powers which had always regarded the Ottoman state efficiency and military ability as less advanced than those possessed by Western powers. In addressing the ills of Ottoman society, the Empire was attempting to reach out to European powers for aid in bolstering their state; effectively, the Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane’s presentation to European diplomats was an open request for help and potential acceptance from European powers. The Ottoman Empire, in the views of Lewis’s Islamists, had been corrupted and interfered with by Western powers.
Lewis blames the rejection of Western modernization and other ideals on the relations between the Muslim world and the West: humiliation at the submitting of the Muslim world to Western hegemony – including the enforcement of Western politics and secularism by corrupted officials within the Muslim world, seen as a result of Western interference into the Dar al-Islam – and a disgust at the self-destructive, mechanical nature of a world that regards itself most predominantly by its own modernized nature . As Lewis states, the United States is the “legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West”; thus, the US is the target of the Dar al-Islam’s centuries-old frustration toward the West . In an attempt to strike out against this corruptive polity, the Muslim World has adapted some of its aspects – political freedom, Western military technology – and modified it in a way to best suit its Islamic world and better assist in the spread of fundamentalism.
The views of Sayyid Qutb, as published in his Milestones narrative, are an interesting companion piece to Bernard Lewis’s “Roots of Muslim Rage”. In his Introduction Qutb denies the legitimacy of the two major political systems put to use by the West – Soviet communism and Western democracy – for their inability to serve the world’s population properly as well as their lack of regard for the important morals to which the human race must adhere. Qutb claims that the failings of these systems are indicative of a need for the return to Islam, as it is the only “system” (in Qutb’s view, not only religiously but also politically) which encompasses the true importance of morals into its governance . The Egyptian political theorist promotes the revival of an Islamic political tradition in order to combat the secular, “man-made” methods utilized by those who have fallen under Western influence and thus attempt to corrupt the inner-workings of the Dar al-Islam; Qutb goes on to state that, while the Western world is alluring in its production and distribution of “marvelous things” within the fields of science and material matters and that the Islamic world has little to compare to these things, Islam as a political system must be revived to ensure a measure of competition with the West . This is most certainly in accordance with Lewis’s belief that the fundamentalist movement has gained strength due to the imposition of Western political and ideological methods upon fields within the Muslim world.
Rather than outwardly deny all aspects of the modernized West, Qutb points out the importance in material innovation for the Dar al-Islam. In his Introduction, he states the following.
“…Islam itself, which elevates man to the position of representative of God on earth, and which, under certain conditions, considers the responsibilities of this representative as the worship of God and the purpose of man’s creation, makes material progress obligatory for us.”
Qutb’s belief is that, in harnessing material innovation, the Muslim world has the potential to regain what it had lost to the West. He claims that while Europe’s “creative mind” has far surpassed what the Islamic community is able to accomplish contemporarily, it is not in a way that dissuades jahilliyah (“ignorance” – as well as secularism, in Qutb’s regard). To Qutb, the West’s material innovations and non-Islamic progress in general are only a reinforcement of this jahilliyah and has even taken the form of attempts at ruling the world through man-made values as opposed to those that are passed down to the Muslims – in the author’s words, “a corollary of rebellion of God’s authority and the denial of the dignity of man given to him by God” . Qutb’s statements on the subject of European achievement surpassing that of the Islamic civilization is very reminiscent of the claims by Lewis that deep-seated within the Islamic frustration against the West is a jealousy against the perceived superiority of those who utilized modernization.
The jahiliyyah described as plaguing contemporary society also plagued the world in which the original Qur’anic Generation of Muhammad lived. Qutb analyzes why that generation is of any impressive quality, querying as to if the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad was the only reason as to why they were considered so pious. The author’s belief is that the Prophet’s appearance within the Qur’anic Generation was not the deciding factor in their piety; rather, the purity of their faith and their use of Islam as more than just a religious doctrine but as a way of life made them truly admirable . They were largely untouched by cultures best defined through their ignorance, such as the Romans; their sole form of guidance was through the Prophet and, as a direct conduit of God, the message delivered to them was pure and arrived as necessary instead of being available as a guide to life like the Qur’an is today. Qutb goes on to state that the holy message which has passed down through the ages, while still divine in origin, has been intermingled with other sources including theories from other faiths as well as even secular scholarly work; thus, contemporary Islam – influenced by foreign sources and no longer adhered to as a way of life but as a piece of literature or history – is an aspect of the all-encompassing modern jahiliyyah.
One of the most important things to take from Qutb’s analysis of the Qur’anic Generation is its very important role in defining Islamic identity. As noted by Lewis, the impact of the West upon Islamic society and civilization is perceived as eroding the foundation of the basic identity of the Muslim World. This is due to the fact that the identity of Islam has little to do with the traditional Westernized form of modernization and has little real chance to mesh smoothly with some of its secular ideals. Even the historical roots of the two identities, Western and Islamic, are completely separate: although they mingled briefly from time to time, the Western (in this case Roman) identity and the Islamic (in this case Arabian) identity drew extremely little from each other and interacted very rarely. Within Qutb’s view of the Islamic identity, an adoption of Western modernization would be quite painful: by adding aspects to it that are not inherently tied to the Islamic past, the legacy of the Islamic civilization would be effectively corrupted and rendered ignorant. This very viewpoint is held by many members of the Muslim Brotherhood as seen in the film Islam Is the Answer: those members of Egyptian Islamic society who adhered to foreign culture (in this case, the speakers blamed the Western culture of Israel) assisted in the erosion of Islamic identity and the faith itself . In order for a Muslim to act appropriately and work to their full potential, the Islamic state is the ideal structure.
In order to combat ignorance, Qutb advises a “cutting off” of the true Muslims from the world of jahiliyyah. In his stating of this, the author refers to the methods put to use by Muhammad in his removal of the original Qur’anic Generation from the pagan sphere, remarking upon its usefulness in purifying a modern Muslim in its reflection of the efforts of the early Muslims; Qutb even goes on to suggest that today’s ignorance is stronger than it has ever been and that the removal of a Muslim from a heathen (or secular) environment, despite still having ties to it by necessity, is essential to allow true faith . By following a proper Islamic life and denying a life of jahiliyyah, believes Qutb, the proper Muslim will begin to impact the ignorant society around himself and the non-Muslim society will begin to change fundamentally as a result of exposure to such faith. Qutb sees such an oppositional existence as a major struggle, regarding it as a front in the battle directly between the forces of good and evil, which extends past earthly existence and into the afterlife . The author also sees the elimination of foreign influence into the life of a Muslim community as useful in the fostering of an ideal state – namely, one dictated by shari’ah law. This idea is in line with the beliefs of Bernard Lewis, namely in his regard that Islamists view those who combat the existence of Islam in its purest forms as its worst enemies .
The impact of jahiliyyah upon an existing Muslim community can be seen readily in the aforementioned example of Mustafa Reshit Pasha’s Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane. The proclamation regards the faith of its subjects quite differently in comparison to the older Turkish legal documents – a point most prominent in regards to the attempt to appeal to Europeans. The proclamation was not issued alongside a fatwa (Islamic legal proclamation) as was formal with Ottoman declarations. This decision, one that undoubtedly irritated the Ottoman ulama, was a step away from the traditional Ottoman practice of associating the Sultan’s rulings with approval from shari’ah scholars – it was a move toward removing power from the Porte’s religious figures in favor of a more secular centralization of authority. In addition, religious equality was promoted alongside the safety of all Ottoman subjects . This ruling is in drastic contrast to Sari Mehmed Pasha’s “Ministers and Bribery”, a piece which demanded the submission of the Sultan’s subjects to the will of Allah and the Sultan himself as the representation of Islam’s highest terrestrial authority; it is also a display of the sort of behavior which would be explained by Lewis’s Islamists and Qutb himself as a corruption of Muslims due to the interference of the West . For the world’s greatest Islamic power to promote a step toward secularism – a blasphemously Western ideal, by Qutb’s and Lewis’s writing – would be a direct denial of Islam’s legitimacy within the form of a state .
Despite the fierceness with which Islamists decry the West, it is evident that the at least some aspects of modernization are applicable to Islamism. On the one hand, the issuing of a document such as the Hatt-i Şerif Gülhane would be seen as an abandonment of the Islamic ideal in an attempt to join in with the legacy of the secularizing, nigh-faithless West. Those nations best defined as modernized or even defined through their modernization have been the ones who have enacted policies of imperialism – in Lewis’s loose definition, control over Muslims by non-Muslims – and abuse toward the non-modernized and predominantly Islamic world for the last several hundred years . The West has largely been in control of the world’s affairs for quite some time and, naturally, the Islamic world chafes under this hegemony. In addition, ‘modern’ systems such as Western governments and banks do not function appropriately within Islamic societies, drawing the ire of both the Islamic elite and the common Muslim . On the other hand, Qutb displays in Milestones – a work widely considered indicative and influential within Islamist thought – has great regard for human material innovation; he extolls the importance of regaining the Islamic legacy lost to that civilization’s rivalry with the West and claims that modernization is the path which Islamism must follow in order to reclaim its purity of faith . In addition, Lewis makes special note of the adaptation of Western technologies and political systems by Islamic institutions and states – regardless of their relations with Western powers – in order to fulfill an Islamic goal, within the framework of a largely unchallenged Islamic identity .
In comparing and contrasting the sources, it becomes clear that “Westernization” – the secular, self-absorbed modernization touted by the imperialists of Europe and the United States – is not a goal favored by modern Islamists due to their view that it can only lead to the corruption of an individual and eventually an entire society. On the other hand, modernization is not a force completely in opposition to Islamism: the hostility directed at modernity is more of a lashing out against the hegemonic, faithless West than it is a rejection of progress. At their roots, Qutb and Lewis support the concept that Islamism does not deny the usefulness – and in Qutb’s case, necessity – of modernity in the face of Western opposition. It is very evident that the modernization put to use by Islamists must be quite different from the model provided by the West: it must assist in the preservation of Islamic fundamentals and conserve the essential aspects of the Muslim identity.
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Works Cited
1. Crews, Robert. "Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth-Century Russia.” The American Historical Review 108.1 (2003): 50-83.
2. Lewis, Bernard. “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” The Atlantic 266.3 (1990): 47-60.
3. Marchal, Roland. “Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War Before and After September 11” in de Waal, Alex (editor). Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
4. Mustafa Reshit Pasha, Halil Inalcik (translator) and J.C. Hurewitz (editor). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record. Yale University Press: New Haven, 1975.
5. Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones. Kazi Publications: Chicago, 1993.
6. Sari Mehmed Pasha and Walter Livingston Wright, Jr. (translator/editor). Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and Governors. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1971.
7. Islam Is the Answer. Film. USA/Egypt: Landmark Media, 1988.
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